As the first nonprofit in the nation to become a
charter school authorizer, Volunteers of America
of Minnesota (VOA of MN) focuses on developing
education options that will fill a targeted
void. VOA of MN's Charter School Sponsorship
Program stands out for its efforts to authorize
schools that address the genuine needs of the
communities where they are located. Several
VOA of MN schools serve high populations of
students with special needs as well as students
who come from low-income families.

VOA of MN has a 110-year history of providing
services to the most marginalized populations.
The organization has about 4,000 volunteers and
700 paid staff members, but its Charter School
Sponsorship Program is only a small part of the
organization, with only two full-time staff members:
a director who handles four schools and
the policy-related activities of the work, and a
charter school liaison who is the direct contact
for VOA of MN's other eight schools and works
to develop a network among existing schools.

The VOA of MN charter office's mission is closely
aligned with the mission of its parent organization.
The mission is most evident in the criteria
that the office uses to choose which schools
to authorize: VOA of MN's charter office gives
priority to schools that are small, focus on marginalized students, feature service learning, fill
a void in the community, and embrace racial,
ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity.

The portfolio of schools that VOA of MN authorizes
is quite diverse. For example, it authorizes
a high school for deaf students that offers a bilingual
program in English and American Sign
Language; a K–8 school located on the White
Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota; a duallanguage
immersion Spanish and English K–8
school that also promotes conflict resolution; a
K–8 school that combines rigorous college preparatory
courses with a focus on outdoor education;
and a grades 7–12 school that features
project-based learning that is facilitated online.

Because VOA of MN's charter office is so small,
it often draws on the larger VOA of MN organization
for help with legal, financial, or fund-raising
issues. It also takes advantage of what has
been developed by other authorizers. "A lot of
what we use is replicating what we see as good
practices elsewhere," says Justin Testerman, director
of VOA of MN's Charter School Sponsorship
Program. "When I started, I went out and
looked at the places I thought were doing the
best work, then borrowed what they were doing
and changed it to fit our environment."

As an active member of the National Association
of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA),
VOA of MN's charter office has taken advantage
of NACSA's tools and resources and has adopted
tools from other authorizers and organizations—
including accountability and monitoring
tools from Indianapolis, a five-step intervention
process from the District of Columbia Public
Charter School Board,32 and a checklist for
opening schools from the Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory.33

One of the VOA of MN charter office's biggest
problems is limited funding. Minnesota's charter
law severely restricts funding for charter school
authorizers. For this reason, VOA of MN's charter
office has had to get additional funding from
the larger VOA of MN organization, and it saves
on costs by having only two staff people and by
not having to pay rent—VOA of MN provides
the office space. The charter office also has
leveraged local resources by directing schools
to the services of local and statewide organizations,
such as the Center for School Change, the
Minnesota Association of Charter Schools, and
the state department of education.

As another approach to its funding challenge,
VOA of MN actively works to influence statelevel
policy and to increase funding for highquality
authorizers. In particular, the director
of the VOA of MN authorizing office is heavily
involved in statewide charter policy organizations
and has worked to improve the quality of
charter authorizing across the state by introducing
more rigorous standards.

Being active at the state level in other chartering
organizations also has helped VOA of MN
staff members cultivate contacts among people who get a lot of inquiries from potential school
operators. In turn, these contacts refer appropriate
school applicants to VOA of MN, and the
VOA of MN charter office has not needed to
recruit applicants actively.

The VOA of MN charter office director and
school liaison consider their school selection
process to be one of their main strengths. In
their review, they first make sure the proposal
aligns with VOA of MN's mission and principles.
Second, they look at the capacity of the applicant
to implement its plan. Not all applicants must
have an education background, but according
to Testerman, VOA of MN staff members look
for applicants to be "sincere and realistic" and to
have the "stamina and determination" needed to
open and successfully run a school.

Applicants submit a proposal and business plan
to the VOA of MN charter office, and these
materials go to a group of reviewers who then
have three weeks to evaluate the applications.
Reviewers include the two VOA of MN charter
office staff members and six or seven advisors,
usually including charter school leaders, business
leaders, representatives from charter support
organizations, and a lawyer who has been
on several charter school boards. The reviewers
provide extensive written feedback and score
the applications using a rubric. All applicants,
regardless of whether VOA of MN chooses
to authorize them or not, get extensive feedback—
three or four pages of comments—about
their plans.

After discussing each application, the review
group makes a recommendation and the VOA
of MN charter office director then makes a decision
on whether to invite the applicant in for further conversations. (So far, the director has
always agreed with the review group's recommendations.)
The applicants who are invited for
an interview receive more feedback on their applications,
and VOA of MN staff members have
a chance to further evaluate the applicants.

If VOA of MN decides to approve the proposal,
the applicant has one month to revise its application
before it is submitted to the state by VOA
of MN. In Minnesota, there is a two-tiered application
process with applications first approved
by an authorizer, who then takes the application
to the Minnesota Department of Education
for final approval. In only one case has an applicant
gone through VOA of MN's process and
received approval from VOA of MN but failed
to get a charter from the state. However, this
group was successful in getting a charter from
the state the next year because it reworked its
curriculum plans significantly.

According to VOA of MN's charter office staff
members, another strength of their approach is
the alignment they have achieved between different
parts of their process, from application
review to contract, to accountability and monitoring.
They have learned that a lack of alignment
can confuse and disorient schools. For
this reason, VOA of MN staff members makes
sure that everything they ask for in biannual
reports, for example, is directly tied to VOA of
MN's statutory authority and is in the school's
accountability plan.

One advantage of the VOA of MN charter office's
small size and personalization is that its two staff
members are able to develop and maintain strong
relationships with their schools. These staff members
require schools to submit two reports per year; the reports assess academic performance,
identify strategies for meeting challenges, and
include information on fiscal management, governance,
operations, and compliance. The second
report also serves as the annual report that
is required by the state, although the VOA of MN
report requires more information.

VOA of MN staff members also do two formal
visits per year and two informal visits to each
school. Site visits allow the authorizer to monitor
and provide feedback as well as to follow up
on any particular information from the written
reports. The formal site visits include classroom
observations and interviews with students, the
business manager, teachers, board members,
and parents, as well as meetings with the principal
and staff.

In addition to the formal and informal site visits,
VOA of MN staff members attend four board
meetings per year at each school and collect
board minutes from every board meeting. These
minutes act as an early warning sign, with VOA
of MN staff members using them to look for
potential problems, such as financial concerns,
personnel issues, or enrollment concerns.

As part of VOA of MN's efforts to develop a
knowledge-sharing network among its schools,
the VOA of MN charter office holds annual
meetings and provides strong online resources.

The schools that VOA of MN authorizes have performed
well so far in terms of student achievement—
only one school in the past year did not
make AYP. A few schools have had other kinds of
struggles, such as attracting the anticipated number
of students, but, for the most part, parents are
satisfied and the students are doing well.

Signs of Success: Volunteers of
America of Minnesota

Six out of eight VOA of MN-authorized
schools operating in 2005–06 for which
there were comparison data available
performed as well or better than schools
with similar demographic data in reading
or math on state standardized tests.

Seven out of the 11 VOA of MN-authorized
schools operating in 2005–06 got four stars
on the Minnesota Star Rating System in
either reading or math. The Minnesota Star
Rating System is determined by AYP and
other achievement benchmarks, and five
stars is the highest number possible, on a
scale of one to five.

Five out of 12 VOA of MN-authorized
schools earned the Minnesota Department
of Education School Finance Award
for fiscal year 2005. VOA of MN was the
only authorizer with multiple charter
schools earning the award.